CNN Lies About Reagan’s Disastrous ‘Amnesty’

In 1979, as civil war in El Salvador began to grip the country, a young man named Aristedes Parada faced a choice: Stay home and be recruited into the bloody fight, or flee for a chance to survive.

“There was no future there. I had to be hiding from the military, from the guerrillas,” Parada told CNN of his youth in El Salvador. “It was horrible.”

He boarded a bus heading north for a days-long journey that would take him across his native country, through Guatemala and Mexico, and finally, to the U.S. border, where he hired a coyote to guide him into Texas illegally. Without papers, Parada worked in construction in Houston, and eventually made his way to Virginia, where he married Edelmira Parada, a young Salvadoran woman also lived there unlawfully. They had two children, both born as U.S. citizens.

The Paradas were among many who poured across the U.S.-Mexico border around the time when Ronald Reagan began his presidency. He faced a situation that appears all-too-familiar to the 2016 presidential candidates, who are grappling with a similar problem three decades later. But Reagan’s solution was very different: He eventually granted amnesty to millions.

While Reagan is recognized among Republicans as the greatest president in modern times, most GOP presidential candidates are ignoring his approach to immigration.